小茶叶，大商机

具有保健功效的普洱茶除了可以饮用之外还具有收藏价值，所以被喻为能喝的古董，自然成为收藏有和茶叶爱好者的心头爱。     

Risky IPTV Investment

IPTV （Internet Protocol television） is a frequently mentioned word recently, since Shanda changes its main business to IPTV, which isrecognized as a new technology and at- tractive business in the future. Shanda is the most active Chinese online game pioneer, it has produced one trail box, which will be used as the host while traditional TV station as terminal of the IPTV. Shanda hopes that the box＇s development and the family entertainment service operation will boost its revenue and help to recover the investors＇ confidence. It is estimated that Shanda has spend about $450 millions on IPTV in the last year, including production research and sales channel establishment. However, it is reported that the box is of poor quality. Even the internal trial members complained about the box＇s unsatisfactory performance. In addition, the price of the box is about 6,000 RMB each （equivalent US $ 800）, it is too expen-sive to most Chinese consumers.     

Economic Liberalism and the State: Dismantling the Myth of Naïve Laissez-Faire

The article offers a critique of the prevailing understanding of the relationship between neoliberalism and classic nineteenth-century liberalism in contemporary international political economy (IPE) and offers a redefinition inspired by Polanyi and Gramsci. Within critical IPE studies, a consensus has emerged that neoliberalism cannot be reduced to a simple attempt to roll back the economy and let loose free-market forces. However, this insight relies on contrasting neoliberalism with a classic liberalism, that is, a simple attempt to implement just this naïve laissez-faire ideology. In contrast, this article argues that nineteenth-century liberalism is also characterised by an active use of state and legislative power. Through a historical study of two cases from nineteenth-century Britain, Poor Law reform and the Gold Standard, the paper will argue that state action played a central role even during the heyday of laissez-faire liberalism. With a starting point in Polanyi’s dictum that ‘laissez-faire was planned’, this reinvestigation will point towards a need to develop a more nuanced understanding of the distinctions between economic theory, ideology, and practical policy, as well as pointing towards a general reinterpretation of the role of the state in liberal economic ideology.     

Market structure and diversification of mutual funds

This study characterizes a systematic relationship between the diversification incentives and the market structure of the mutual funds industry with investors differentiated by their attitude towards risk. With sufficiently low competition the subgame perfect portfolio equilibrium exhibits maximal risk differentiation. With intensified competition intermediate funds, i.e., those attracting investors with intermediate attitudes towards risk, select diversified portfolios. Finally, we offer a general characterization of how imperfect competition between risk-differentiated funds will generate an equilibrium relationship between risk and expected returns.     

金融危机下远期付款交单的风险及其防范

远期付款交单是一种商业信用,出口商的收汇安全主要取决于进口商的信用.在当前金融危机下,各国贸易保护主义抬头,政策多变、进口商破产增加,使出口商的收汇遇到更多的国家风险和进口商的信用风险.因此出口商在选用远期付款交单进行结算时一定要增强风险防范意识,注意考察进口国的相关政策及进口商的资信情况并投保出口信用险以规避自身风险.     

Horizontal mergers and product quality

We study the effects of a horizontal merger when firms compete on price and quality. In a Salop framework with three symmetric firms, several striking results appear. First, the merging firms reduce quality but possibly also price, whereas the outside firm increases both price and quality. As a result, the average price in the market increases, but also the average quality. Second, the outside firm benefits more than the merging firms from the merger, and the merger can be unprofitable for the merger partners, i.e., the “merger paradox” may appear. Third, the merger always reduces total consumer utility (though some consumers may benefit), but total welfare can increase due to endogenous quality cost savings. In a generalized framework with n firms, we identify two key factors for the merger effects: (i) the magnitude of marginal variable quality costs, which determines the nature of strategic interaction and (ii) the cross‐quality and cross‐price demand effects, which determines the intensity of price relative to quality competition. These findings have implications for antitrust policy in industries where quality is a key strategic variable for the firms.     

A ONE‐SECTOR GROWTH MODEL WITH CONSUMPTION STANDARD: INDETERMINATE OR DETERMINATE?

In a representative agent, one-sector growth model in which the discounting is decreasing in the consumption standard measured as the current average consumption flow, Drugeon (1998) establishes local indeterminacy. This paper extends Drugeon's setup in the discount rate. In our setup, the consumption standard is a habit stock that a weighted average of the whole history of average consumption flows in the past. Local indeterminacy emerges only when the speed of habit formation tends to infinity; otherwise, local indeterminacy cannot appear, no matter how large the habit affects the discount rate.     

Henry George Under the Microscope: Comments on "Henry George's Political Critics"

The annual supplement of the AJES for 2008 titled Henry George: Political Ideologue, Social Philosopher, and Economic Theorist had as its first and longest essay "Henry George's Political Critics" by Professor Michael Hudson. It offered a multitude of criticisms, most of which Prof. Hudson seemed to agree with. All purported to be criticisms of George as a political strategist, though some seem more to originate from Hudson's disagreement with theoretical positions George was bound to take. The purpose of this short paper is to show that Professor Hudson's long article fails to do what it seems intended to do. That is, it fails to show that trade unionists and especially socialists were "natural allies" of the Georgist movement, that it was George's fault that that they were not, and that George "allied" his movement irrevocably to "capital," rejecting its "natural allies."